Such theological discussions with controversial points of view are not the usual stuff of late-night TV talk shows, and it is interesting the Colbert was willing to explore such an issue. Although he is a believer, he was willing to let the atheist Gervais (who refers to himself as an agnostic-atheist and explains what that is) have his say. Gervais says some things that are widely believed but are not self-evidently true though Colbert concedes them, such as that science proves things to be true or that if all the current scientific knowledge were destroyed, they would come back pretty much intact a thousand years from now.
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Did anyone else catch the orchestra playing “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” as they wrapped up?
Colbert seemed a bit pushy, was that an act or was he defensive because his personal faith was being questioned? He’s usually more laid-back and relaxed in those kinds of interviews.
Colbert is too good for Jesus.
Smokey, I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets a little defensive on this subject. His Catholicism has always been one of the more surprising things about him and outside of his church and family I can’t see him knowing a lot of other religious believers.
It does. It has proved that the earth is billions of years old, that the sun is much bigger than the earth and produces its heat and light through nuclear fusion, that human beings are directly descended from non-human animals, that many diseases are caused by microbes… That it doesn’t prove things to be logically necessary, as mathematics does, is neither here nor there. The myth that it doesn’t prove things is largely down to unthinking adherence to Popperian dogma, itself a result of Popper’s very narrow view of what counted as science -- basically, he thought it consisted only of universal generalizations.